


Lady of Ashes

by SomeEnchantedEve



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeEnchantedEve/pseuds/SomeEnchantedEve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the GoT_Exchange Comment Fic Meme:</p><p>Prompt: Catelyn and Jon reunion AU - Catelyn was not at the Red Wedding. </p><p>Winterfell is in ashes, and she is all that is left of it. <i>There is so much evil in the world that we are too weary to fight amongst ourselves.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady of Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Slight Jon/Robb, but only if you're looking for it. =)

Winterfell is in ashes, and she is all that is left of it.

Jon did not think to find her here – there is nothing left here, truly (why is she here, then?) – and he knows that he is certainly as unexpected as she is, here.

The castle is not as broken as he had expected, but still far more desolate than he had ever hoped to see it, the tower of the Great Keep remains, though hollowed, and a wall of the Great Hall, crumbled and groaning under the weight of moss and snow where before it would stand tall and proud. Other towers stand half-destroyed, some were brought to the ground, and Jon tries to think of the castle he remembers, his home, the true Winterfell, and not the wasteland this has become.

It is by the sept that he finds her; the newest addition to the castle was strong enough to withstand years of winter but fire brings it to the ground, stones and rubble to worship by. _Septs do not belong in the North,_ he thinks dimly, but he is staring at her, shocked, certain that she is a ghost (for how could she be anything but, anything otherwise would be impossible), and he almost thinks to find Robb at her side, Arya running through the Keep, Sansa reading by the hot spring.

“What are you doing here?” he blurts out, and she lifts her eyes, startled at the intrusion, and he sees shock and joy and wanting written across her face for the briefest moment when she sees his face, before the light there fades and her mouth settles into grim recognition. He raises his hand to his beard, feeling a sudden stab of guilt that he did not think to shave. _I did not think to find her here, I have no wish to taunt her with ghosts._ “Lady Stark,” he says formally, apologetic, redefining the spaces between them, “I am sorry. I did not mean to startle you.” (He is sorry for much more, for everything, and if she were anyone else he would tell her so, but even now after all these years, he knows they are not words she wants from his lips.)

She keeps her distance so he approaches slowly, carefully ( _how did she even get here, surely she did not travel alone…_ ), mostly curiously, still not certain if she is standing in the ruins of the castle that had been home to them both (and how she had hated that, he knows), or if he is just imagining (though if he were to imagine, she would not be the one he called to mind, those thoughts of cold blue eyes always rose unbidden and unwelcome).

“Lord Snow,” she says in acknowledgement, and a corner of her mouth twitches slightly, the irony is not lost, “as I hear you are called, now. I could ask you the same.”

He stops in front of her.

There is no warmth in her blue eyes, there has never been warmth for him, but the cold distaste he is so used to seeing seems more sedate than he remembers, somehow. He wonders if it is a lesser thing now, really, if she has so much hatred for Freys and Lannisters and wicked creatures who had torn everything from her that she has nothing left for Jon Snow; or if, instead, merely his prediction has come true and he has seen things so much more frightening than Catelyn Tully Stark that her displeasure at his presence is a small thing compared to a widget’s hand around his throat, a betrayer’s whisper amongst the ranks, those who wished him true ill and did not simply wish him elsewhere.

She had always been an imposing figure in his childhood, towering in silent disapproval, but he tops her by nearly a head, now. Her thick auburn hair is pulled back into a sloppy braid (she must do it herself now, he supposes, he sees no one accompanying her), and grief is written in lines by her eyes and mouth that he does not remember.

She seems much smaller now to him, and he never thought he would feel sorry for Catelyn Stark, but he does, and he wishes he could reach out to her, to tell her that all she has lost he has lost, too, that they are in pain but they are alive (he thinks it would be of small comfort to her, though, looking at her face wracked with sorrow).

He does not, he knows better. 

He could marvel at how their lives have cartwheeled, he is the Lord Commander and though the Night’s Watch is not regarded with the same honor it had been in centuries past, there is still a sort of deference, no matter how small, that is his, and there is a satisfaction in knowing his place in the world and knowing it firm, a fullness he had never known as a child sparring next to Robb in the yard (but there is an emptiness, too, an emptiness that Robb and Arya and all his siblings and his father had lived in, and he would take back his bastard state and uncertain future in a heartbeat for one moment with them).

And now the formidable Lady Stark is nothing more than the mother of a fallen rebel king (he cannot bear to think of what befell Robb that night, he pushes it from his mind and wonders if she does the same or if she never has respite), the widow of a condemned traitor, sister to a hostage lord and a murdered lady; the lady of the North is nothing more now than the lady of ashes and wind, with no family, no home, and no power. They do not hunt her because they do not fear her – what could she do to them, without a living trueborn son of Eddard Stark to lay claim to their home, to their inheritance? – and yet no northern holdfast would dare offer her a place to stay, in fear of being branded a traitor to the triumphant crown.

It makes sense, suddenly, that she would be here – where else is there in the world for her? 

Absurdly, he feels some sort of obligation to help her, to find her refuge, assure her safety, perhaps because those who would have done so, his father and Robb, are gone, perhaps because she is for all he knows the last of the Stark family, perhaps because it is, in a way, justice for the brother he had lost and the war that king had lost, justice for the North. _The Night’s Watch has no family but their sworn brothers, and you were no family to me anyway. We take no part in these wars._

“I had to see,” he says, finally, after a long moment of considering. “King Stannis has offered me Winterfell,” he pauses, and perhaps that is cruelty, there is still anger, for the love he never received, the place that was never his, but he does not get the reaction he thought. Her face is carefully blank, she barely stirs at the thought, at her worst fear (but then fears were simpler in those days past, he thinks), of Winterfell being laid claim to by her husband’s bastard son. “And I wanted to see exactly what I was rejecting.”

“Rejecting?” Still her voice is flat, indifferent, her boots crunch in the snow as she walks away, following along the collapsed bridge to the south gate, and he walks with her, not a step behind but shoulder to shoulder, _she is not a great lady anymore._

“Yes,” he says, and despite himself he is slightly perturbed by her indifference; there is still that small part of him, that he learned long ago to push down, that yearns for her acceptance, approval, an ache he has forced further and further away but the phantom pain is still there, like a stubbed toe. “I am a man of the Night’s Watch. And Winterfell belongs to Sansa.” 

“Yes,” she agrees quietly. A breeze stirs a stray strand of hair, escaped from her plait, and she gazes at the broken remains of the great seat of the North. “My Sansa, wherever in the world she is, and her Lannister husband. She is the heiress of ruins.” 

“These ruins are hers by right,” he maintains stubbornly and she almost smiles, almost, and he can almost see the beautiful woman she once was before tragedy stole it from her, can almost see the mother she had been to his siblings and never to him, but mostly he sees Robb in her at that moment (almost, it is always almost and not enough). 

He opens his mouth, he wants to tell her, tell her that he had ridden in the night to join Robb’s side, that his sworn brothers had pulled him back and it has haunted him forever since, that he would have died at his brother’s side and never betrayed him, that he is not another Theon Turncloak. He wants to ask about his brother the king, how the crown sat his head, if he took the lessons their father had given them both, if he had been happy, in those moments before he fell. 

Her eyes are empty on him, expansive like the sky beyond the Wall, _there is something closed up deep inside her,_ he thinks, whatever she has locked away, her memories and pain and fury, whatever she has had to put aside to keep going, the grief she has swallowed to keep moving, to keep living. _We must all do what we can to go on._

He does not ask his questions, he takes pity, it is enough that he is the ghost of his father, he has no desire to crack open that box she has locked herself into to hold herself together. 

Jon clears his throat. “But ruins they remain, my lady – you cannot stay here.” 

“And where would you have me go, Lord Snow?” she asks, and there is a lilting, mocking note to her voice. “Shall I go to Riverrun, to serve alongside my brother as a hostage to my uncle’s good behavior? Or to King’s Landing to give my head as a gift to the boy king? Or shall I accompany you back to the Wall, I am certain you have sorely missed the joy of my company these years past.” 

He wets his lips, uncertain. “It is not safe here.” 

“It is not safe anywhere,” she replies hotly, and there is a brief spark in those eyes dulled and deadened. “And where else would my girls go, now that they are lost in the world? If they are alive, they will come here. They will come home, such as it is now.”

Jon takes a step closer, and sees her eyes are damp, Catelyn Stark is not a woman prone to tears and yet the last time he saw her she had wept for Bran and now she weeps for the rest, for all those lost to her, and he cannot help it; he reaches for her hand, clasping it between his gloved ones. Her mouth twitches, he can see it there, the innate resistance, but she does not pull away. _There is so much evil in the world that we are too weary to fight amongst ourselves._

Her hands are cold, he feels even beneath the leather that separates their skin; he is not surprised. _Gloves_ , he thinks. _She needs gloves._

“You cannot remain here. Winterfell will be seized and you will be killed before you see either of them again. If you do not freeze or starve to death, first,” he decides firmly (there is a part of her, a large part that he thinks is dead already, pieces of her heart buried with his father and with Robb and Bran and Rickon, and parts lost with the girls, and he wonders if she would believe him if he said his is much the same). “Come. We will find something other than this folly.” (What that is, he does not know, the Wall is no place for a woman and they do not belong at one another's sides, anyway.)

“Why does it matter to you?” she asks, incredulous, as he leads her – fairly drags her – from the ruins, the ashes she will pass to the few children that remain. 

He pauses, wondering the same; for all that she never spared him a kindness, he did not wish Catelyn Stark ill but nor did he think he would bestir himself for her in her need. He decides, after a moment, to answer honestly. “It would matter to Robb. And to Father. And Bran, and Rickon, and if they do live, it will matter a great deal to Sansa and Arya, and they will have need of you.” 

“They live,” she answers softly, pleadingly, her voice catches and her eyes seek reassurance. He could practically see it then, the break in that armor she wears like a second skin, it is almost a visible entity. He is suddenly no longer pulling her and her stride matches his again. “They must.” _They must, they are all that is left for us, for the North…_

He does not answer, but holds the hope close.


End file.
